http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
IF AL GORE keeps talking incessantly about education, someday he may slip and say something interesting. But he avoided that
pitfall--anything novel would offend his leash-holders, the teachers' unions--in his Dallas speech last Friday, unless you find
interesting this unintended lesson, drawn from his speech, about how schools are failing to teach future speechwriters how to
write:

"Today, I am proposing a new national commitment to bring revolutionary improvements to our schools--built on three basic
principles. First, I am proposing a major national investment to bring revolutionary improvements to our schools. Second, I am
proposing a national revolution in . . ."

By November the salient issue may be not education but: Can Americans bear a president who talks to them as though they are
dim fourth-graders? Whoever writes Gore's stuff knows his style, the bludgeoning repetition of cant, as in his almost comic
incantations about Republicans' "risky tax schemes." In Dallas, Gore used "revolution," "revolutionary" or "revolutionize" eight
times and "invest" (a weasel word to avoid "spending") or some permutation of it 14 times. And--it is as reflexive as a
sneeze--he used "tax scheme" three times, "risky tax cut" once and threw in another "scheme," referring to vouchers, for good
measure.

Gore's grating style in Dallas suited his banal substance, which was Lyndon Johnson redux. The crux of Gore's plan is more
spending of the kinds that are pleasing to teachers' unions. Such as: "My education plan invests in smaller schools and smaller
classes--because we know that is one of the most effective ways to improve student performance."

Actually, we know no such thing. Pupil-teacher ratios have been shrinking for a century. In 1955 pupil-teacher ratios in public
elementary and secondary schools were 30.2-to-one and 20.9-to-one respectively. In 1998 they were 18.9-to-one and
14.7-to-one. We now know it is possible to have, simultaneously, declining pupil-teacher ratios and declining scores on tests
measuring schools' cognitive results. If making classes smaller is such an effective route to educational improvement, why, after
45 years of declining pupil-teacher ratios, are schools so unsatisfactory they need to be "revolutionized" by Gore's
"investments"?

Gore's Dallas speech proves the need for remedial classes not only in prose composition but in elementary arithmetic, too. He
says that George W. Bush's "tax scheme, if enacted, would guarantee big cuts in spending for public schools." Well.

Bush's proposed tax cut over 10 years would involve just 5 percent of projected federal revenues. And federal money amounts
to just 7 percent of all spending on public elementary and secondary education. Tonight's homework assignment, boys and
girls, is to calculate how trimming 5 percent of federal revenues could necessitate "big cuts" in education, 93 percent of which is
paid for with nonfederal funds.

Gore's vow that every new teacher hired under his program would be "fully qualified" probably is an encoded promise that all
new teachers would be herded through the often petty, irrelevant and ideologically poisoning education schools that issue
credentials to teachers. Education schools feed their graduates into, and feed off, the teachers' unions. Those unions sometimes
push for state legislation that keeps the education schools in business by requiring teachers to pass through them.

"There are," says Gore, "too many school districts in America where less than half the students graduate, and where those who
do graduate aren't ready for college or good jobs." Washington has lots of public schools that fit that description, which is why
none of Gore's children attended one.

Most failing schools serve (if that is the word) poor and minority children, whose parents increasingly favor meaningful school
choice programs--programs that give parents resources to choose between public and private schools, thereby making the
public school system compete. Gore is vehemently opposed to that. The "dramatic expansion of public school choice" he
promises would enable students to choose only among public schools, thereby keeping students from low-income families
confined to the public education plantation.

What would be "revolutionary" would be a Gore education proposal that seriously offended the teachers' unions. But he is
utterly orthodox in his belief that public schools are splendid--and desperately in need of revolutionizing investments.

"Fundamental decisions about education have to be made at the local level," said Gore at the beginning of last week's litany of
proposals for using federal money, and the threat of withdrawing it, to turn the federal government into the nation's school
board. To the classes Gore needs in remedial composition and arithmetic, add one on elementary
logic.